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23 October 2010

Wet Burrito Award

The Department of Homeland Security had an idea to build a "virtual fence" along the US Mexico border to keep out the illegals. The space-age barrier was to be built among the most hostile desert environments known to man. The high-tech towers were to include state-of-the art long-range cameras, radar devices, broadband wireless access points, thermal imaging capabilities, and highly sensitive vibration sensors, all working in a complex tandem of techonology and design.

It didn't work. Costs skyrocketed. Boeing, the company given the contract to oversee the design of the fence, missed deadlines. Homeland Security has given Boeing the heave-ho. According to the LA Times, "after an investment of more than $1 billion, [it] may be a system with only 53 miles of unreliable coverage along the nearly 2,000-mile border." Anyone who's seen a Rooba Vacuuming Robot in comical inaction could have told you the virtural fence in the middle of nowhere was a bad idea.

The hapless virtual fence project would be funny except for two reasons: 1) the total waste of money, and 2) how this failure will still not debunk the fanciful notion of securing our borders.

Critics of comprehensive immigration reform always say change can't happen until the border is secure. Guess what? It never will be. At best border security is a nebulous goal where "success" is open to interpretation. At worst it continues as it was always designed: a never-to-be-achieved benchmark forever preventing a rational discussion of how to fix immigration.